Analysis of financial and business information based on interactive data

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are provided for analysis of financial and business information based on interactive data, such as XBRL data. According to one embodiment, an intelligent financial and business information reporting application includes methods to allow the results of many companies to be more efficiently compared by regulators, investors, and other consumers of XBRL data. Embodiments of the present invention also provide more sophisticated reporting by “deriving” facts for elements (concepts) for which there are no direct facts, but for which there is information in the calculation linkbase to allow “calculated facts” to be determined.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of priority of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/824,280, filed on Aug. 31, 2006, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.

This application is related to copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/163,965 and Ser. No. 11/688,857, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety for all purposes.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Contained herein is material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction of the patent disclosure by any person as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all rights to the copyright whatsoever. Copyright© 2006-2007 Rivet Software, Inc.

BACKGROUND

1. Field

Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to business intelligence (BI) systems and financial analysis systems. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention provide for one or more of (i) Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) taxonomy mapping (i.e., mapping extension taxonomy elements to a standard base taxonomy to achieve consistency and comparability in a diverse reporting environment), (ii) use of an XBRL calculation linkbase to intelligently report amounts; (iii) the dynamic building of a worksheet (report) from instance document or taxonomy branch; and (iv) building of a comprehensive XBRL data flow (e.g., using XBRL to aggregate information from multiple sources and push summary information into an XBRL document).

2. Description of Related Art

The XBRL standard provides a framework to categorize information, but also provides a great deal of flexibility for XBRL user within this framework. The specific rules of how information should be reported are the responsibility of the organization requesting the XBRL documents. For example, the FDIC requires member banks to submit XBRL Instance Documents that use the FDIC taxonomy, but banks also must follow specific rules in presenting information within instance documents.

The SEC takes a completely different approach than the FDIC. Since XBRL documents are to be consumed not just by the SEC, but also the investing public, the SEC (at least for now) gives filing companies a great deal of latitude to present information in such a way that best describes the unique characteristics of each company. Although the SEC does require filing companies to use a standard taxonomy—such as US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for Commercial and Industrial companies (US GAAP CI)—they also allow those companies to create an extension taxonomy which has information not contained in the base taxonomy. An extension may contain completely new elements, or simply a different presentation than the base taxonomy. For example, an XBRL taxonomy may specify that an account called “Cash” appear higher in a Balance Sheet than an account called “Investments”; a filing company may want to reverse this presentation, and to do so would require an extended taxonomy. In addition, some XBRL tagging software products actually encourage filers to create large groups of elements outside of the base taxonomy—even when there is very little difference between the extended elements and base taxonomy.

Although extension taxonomies give companies an effective way to present information in a totally customized way, this flexibility makes comparisons between companies extremely difficult. And comparisons are crucial to regulators, investors, and other consumers of XBRL data, since comparing a company's financial results to industry groups, or to trends, averages, indexes, and various mathematical and statistical formulas, is the most fundamental way to evaluate a company's performance and value. One of the key issues decision makers in corporations face today is finding out how the business is doing, planning for the future, measuring performance against plan, being able to determine when and how a plan might need to be changed in response to internal and external events and ensuring that the organization meets regulatory requirements. This requires that reports and other financial applications are able to work with data from more than one system and the systems of more than one sub-entity (division, country office, etc.).

The XBRL standard also provides a framework for the taxonomy author to specify the calculation (summation) rules. The calculation linkbase is designed to allow basic operations to be defined for sets of items in a taxonomy schema document. These calculations can then be used to check that these operations have been calculated correctly in an XBRL instance document. Calculation linkbase(s) provide formulas that are designed for basic summations.

Another basic benefit of using a calculation linkbase is to improve quality of an XBRL report (XBRL instance). The calculation linkbase defines basic calculation validation rules (addition/subtraction), which apply for all instances of the taxonomy. For example two elements (concepts) A, B can be summed up to a third element (concept) C, such that C=A+B.

In a calculation linkbase, one element can have multiple summation rules defined. This means, both A=B+C and A=D+E are true. So B+C must also be equal to D+E for the instance to be categorized as “valid” based on the calculation linkbase. However, most reporting packets improperly report elements (concepts) for which there are no direct facts reported in the instance document.

SUMMARY

Systems and methods are described for analysis of financial and business information based on interactive data, such as XBRL data. According to one embodiment, an intelligent financial and business information reporting application includes methods to allow the results of many companies to be more efficiently compared by regulators, investors, and other consumers of XBRL data. Embodiments of the present invention also provide more sophisticated reporting by “deriving” facts for elements (concepts) for which there are no direct facts, but for which there is information in the calculation linkbase to allow “calculated facts” to be determined.

Other features of embodiments of the present invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description that follows.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments of the present invention are illustrated by way of example, and not by way of limitation, in the FIGURES of the accompanying drawings and in which like reference numerals refer to similar elements and in which:

FIG. 1 is an example of a computer system upon which or with which embodiments of the present invention may be utilized.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Systems and methods are described for analysis of financial and business information based on interactive data, such as XBRL. According to one embodiment an intelligent financial and business information reporting application includes methods to allow the results of many companies, each of which may be represented in differing taxonomies and presented in a customized fashion, to be compared among each other, to industry groups, to trends, averages, indexes, and/or various mathematical and statistical formulas, thereby facilitating evaluation of a company's performance and value. Embodiments of the present invention also provide more sophisticated reporting by “deriving” facts for elements (concepts) for which there are no direct facts, but for which there is information in the calculation linkbase to allow “calculated facts” to be determined. Another goal of embodiments of the present invention is to improve the productivities of designers (RIVET and CROSSFIRE are trademarks of Rivet Software, Inc. of Englewood, Colo.). Although extension taxonomies give companies an effective way to present information in a totally customized way, this flexibility makes comparisons between companies extremely difficult. And comparisons are, since

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that embodiments of the present invention may be practiced without some of these specific details.

Embodiments of the present invention may be provided as a computer program product which may include a machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which may be used to program a computer (or other electronic devices) to perform a process. The machine-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, floppy diskettes, optical disks, compact disc read-only memories (CD-ROMs), and magneto-optical disks, ROMs, random access memories (RAMs), erasable programmable read-only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, or other type of media/machine-readable medium suitable for storing electronic instructions. Moreover, embodiments of the present invention may also be downloaded as a computer program product, wherein the program may be transferred from a remote computer to a requesting computer by way of data signals embodied in a carrier wave or other propagation medium via a communication link (e.g., a modem or network connection).

While, for convenience, various embodiments of the present invention may be described with reference to Microsoft Office Excel, the present invention is equally applicable to various other spreadsheet applications, web-based or online spreadsheets, such as Kyplot, Origin, Quantrix Modeler, Lotus Improv, Ability Spreadsheet, ExcelExplorer, GS-Calc, Mariner Calc, Softmaker Office Planmaker, Spread32, SygmaPlot, The Cruncher, Calc Open, KDCalc, ExcelLite, SpreadsheetGear, 602 Office Tab, Ability Office, Applixware Spreadsheets, AppleWorks, Ashampoo Office PlanMaker, Corel WordPerfect Office Quattro Pro, EasyOffice EasySpreadsheet, Evermore Integrated Office Spreadsheet, Framework, Gobe Spreadsheet, Lotus SmartSuiteLotus 123, Microsoft Works Spreadsheet, Softmaker Office PlanMaker, Open Office Calc, StarOffice Calc, Techdigm Office Calc, Thinkfree Office Spreadsheet, Xoom Office Spreadsheet, JotSpot Tracker, iRows.com, Numsum, ComplyXL, FlyCalc, i-spreadsheet, QuickBase, SecureSheet, Thinkfree, Online Spreadsheet and the like. Additionally, embodiments of the present invention are applicable to other types of productivity tools or programs designed to perform general computational tasks or organizational tasks in relation to underlying data, including word processing applications, such as Microsoft Word and the like and database applications or database management systems, such as 4D, Adabas, Corel Paradox, IBM DB2, FileMaker Pro, FirebirdSQL, IMS, Informix, Ingres, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, OOo Base, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Sybase ASE and the like.

Additionally, while embodiments of the present invention are described with reference to XBRL, it is specifically contemplated that the methods described herein will be applicable to (i) other current and future XBRL-like standards for managing, reporting and/or storing business or analytic data; and/or (ii) other forms of interactive data.

For the sake of illustration, various embodiments of the present invention are described herein in the context of computer programs, physical components, and logical interactions within modern computer networks. Importantly, while these embodiments describe various aspects of the invention in relation to modern computer networks and programs, the method and apparatus described herein are equally applicable to other systems, devices, and networks as one skilled in the art will appreciate. As such, the illustrated applications of the embodiments of the present invention are not meant to be limiting, but instead exemplary.

Terminology

Brief definitions of terms, abbreviations, and phrases used throughout this application are given below.

The term “folio” generally refers to a collection of objects including one or more spreadsheets, metadata elements, hierarchies, and/or various other objects and properties that support enterprise reporting and analysis functionality. According to one embodiment, once a folio is created, reports and analysis can be published and distributed from the folio.

The terms “connected” or “coupled” and related terms are used in an operational sense and are not necessarily limited to a direct physical connection or coupling. Thus, for example, two devices may be couple directly, or via one or more intermediary media or devices. As another example, devices may be coupled in such a way that information can be passed there between, while not sharing any physical connection on with another. Based on the disclosure provided herein, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate a variety of ways in which connection or coupling exists in accordance with the aforementioned definition.

The phrases “in one embodiment,” “according to one embodiment,” and the like generally mean the particular feature, structure, or characteristic following the phrase is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention, and may be included in more than one embodiment of the present invention. Importantly, such phases do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment.

If the specification states a component or feature “may”, “can”, “could”, or “might” be included or have a characteristic, that particular component or feature is not required to be included or have the characteristic.

The term “responsive” includes completely or partially responsive.

Exemplary Computer System Overview

Embodiments of the present invention include various steps, which will be described in more detail below. A variety of these steps may be performed by hardware components or may be embodied in machine-executable instructions, which may be used to cause a general-purpose or special-purpose processor programmed with the instructions to perform the steps. Alternatively, the steps may be performed by a combination of hardware, software, and/or firmware. As such, FIG. 1 is an example of a computer system 100, such as a workstation, personal computer, client, server, or gateway, upon which or with which embodiments of the present invention may be utilized.

According to the present example, the computer system includes a bus 130, at least one processor 105, at least one communication port 110, a main memory 115, a removable storage media 140 a read only memory 120, and a mass storage 125.

Processor(s) 105 can be any known processor, such as, but not limited to, an Intel® Itanium® or Itanium 2 processor(s), or AMD® Opteron® or Athlon MP® processor(s), or Motorola® lines of processors. Communication port(s) 110 can be any of an RS-232 port for use with a modem based dialup connection, a 10/100 Ethernet port, or a Gigabit port using copper or fiber. Communication port(s) 110 may be chosen depending on a network such a Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), or any network to which the computer system 100 connects.

Main memory 115 can be Random Access Memory (RAM), or any other dynamic storage device(s) commonly known in the art. Read only memory 120 can be any static storage device(s) such as Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM) chips for storing static information such as instructions for processor 105.

Mass storage 125 can be used to store information and instructions. For example, hard disks such as the Adaptec® family of SCSI drives, an optical disc, an array of disks such as RAID, such as the Adaptec family of RAID drives, or any other mass storage devices may be used.

Bus 130 communicatively couples processor(s) 105 with the other memory, storage and communication blocks. Bus 130 can be a PCI/PCI-X or SCSI based system bus depending on the storage devices used.

Optionally, operator and administrative interfaces 135, such as a display, keyboard, and a cursor control device, may also be coupled to bus 130 to support direct operator interaction with computer system 100. Other operator and administrative interfaces can be provided through network connections connected through communication ports 110.

Removable storage media 140 can be any kind of external hard-drives, floppy drives, IOMEGA® Zip Drives, Compact Disc—Read Only Memory (CD-ROM), Compact Disc—Re-Writable (CD-RW), Digital Video Disk—Read Only Memory (DVD-ROM).

The components described above are meant to exemplify some types of possibilities. In no way should the aforementioned examples limit the scope of the invention, as they are only exemplary embodiments.

In the attached Appendix, various intelligent financial and business information reporting applications, including the Rivet™ Crossfire™ Analysis and Reporting System and the Crossfire Analyst product, are illustrated according to exemplary embodiments of the present invention. 

1. A method as shown and described in the specification and attached appendices.
 2. A system as shown and described in the specification and attached appendices. 